The CBE Scroll

Comment by Liz

July 3, 2008 @ 6:41 pm

We have taken a risk in putting up this post at this time when we have already been discussing Prof. Sumner’s suppositions but on the other hand, maybe it’s good to get it all out in the open and deal with these statements.

My first comment would be that it is always bad practice to make sweeping statements about any group of people eg. “Catholics believe/do/are ……” just as it is hard to make a definitive statement which says exactly what ALL egalitarians believe.

We need to clearly enunciate which points are particularly relevant and significantly ‘different’ about the point of view we hold. In doing this we need to be careful to not label ALL complementarians as the same either.

Let’s see how this develops!

Comment by Liz

July 3, 2008 @ 8:04 pm

Also..it would be helpful to google Sarah Sumner and read her interview.

It’s a reminder that we are all on a journey and to respect another Christian’s personal experience even when the conclusions are not the same as ours.

That said..the book is undoubtedly endorsing the complementarian view of marriage.

Comment by Sue

July 4, 2008 @ 1:06 am

Perhaps you mean this article by Sarah Sumners.

Two points.

1. I do not feel that Sumners interacts with the fact that kephale in Greek at that time did not have the meaning “authority over.” She also does not interact with this passage from Cyril of Alexandria.

Cyril of Alexandria,

“Therefore of our race he become first kephale, which is arche, and was of the earth and earthy. Since Christ was named the second Adam, he has been placed as kephale, which is arche, of those who through him have been formed anew unto him unto immortality through sanctification in the spirit. Therefore he himself our arche, which is kephale, has appeared as a human being: indeed, he, being by nature God, has a kephale, the Father in heaven. For, being by nature God the Word, he has been begotten from Him. Because kephale means arche, He established the truth for those who are wavering in their mind that man is the kephale of woman, for she was taken out of him. Therefore one Christ and Son and Lord, the one having as kephale the Father in heaven, being God by nature, became for us a kephale accordingly because of his kinship according to the flesh.”

It is rather difficult to get an exact equivalent in English as it meant “source” “origin” and “beginning.” Yes, I do very much think that Christ, as the second Adam, is the arche of man. That is, God shares his nature with Christ, man shares his nature with woman and Christ shares his nature with man. Paul is attempting to communicate something about the shared nature of Christ and God, and man and woman. It is deeply regretted that Paul’s concern with the divine and human nature of Christ has not been well understood.

2. Anyone who teaches unilateral submission needs to be aware of the real life fact that submission to any kind of abuse, verbal or physical, will reinforce the abuse and cause an increase in the abuse, including physical injury. I think Sumner’s fails in limiting the wife’s refusal to submit only to things that are morally wrong or physical abuse. The entire notion of unilateral submission teaches the one accepting submission to increase his demands on the other. I am deeply concerned that there is not more light on the destructive nature of unilateral submission to human relationships.

I believe this information should be basic training for all seminary instructors and pastors.

Comment by Mary

July 4, 2008 @ 8:49 am

Sue, in reading John Hobbins’ articles, he appears to have taken at face value that Sumner considers “servant-leader” to be a valid meaning of kephale in Ephesians 5. I keep reading her presuppositions, and I’m sorry, but they’re simply not egalitarian. That is one example.

Does anyone know if Sumner anywhere deals adequately with what she thinks a husband is supposed to do with Eph. 5:21 (besides claim it applies to his wife)?

Comment by John Hobbins

July 4, 2008 @ 9:10 am

Thank you, Darrell, for highlighting the series I put together. I’ve been struck by people who have emailed me privately to pursue the conversation further.

For the sake of readers who may not take the time to click through to read the posts, here are two reasons why Sarah Sumner is must reading for egalitarians:

(1) She is honest about how both comps and egals lack integrity in approaching scripture. Both sides in the debate like to use the Bible to rule out the positions of the opposing side and buttress their own positions. Scripture is supposed to stand above us, and be allowed to judge our pre-existing positions. How seldom that happens in this debate. As soon as one reads the Bible through the filter of a higher truth derived from elsewhere, it has been effectively silenced. Both comps and egals tend to do this.

(2) She is an accomplished theologian, and does a fine job of showing how to interpret one scriptural passage in the light of all others. This comes through in her interpretation of Ephesians 5.

Sarah’s work, and Sarah and Jim’s forthcoming book, are well-written examples of theologically responsible exegesis and practical application. But there are other avenues of approach to reflection on the issues comps, compegals, and egals debate.

One avenue is to think historically about gender roles in New Testament times. The work of NT scholars like Carolyn Osiek and Andrew T. Lincoln is illuminating. They argue that Paul instructs his fellow Christians to live out their freedom in Christ within culturally given, hierarchically structured master-slave, husband-wife, parent-child relationships. I’m convinced that neither comps nor egals have yet to reflect seriously enough about what that says about their own positions.

Another avenue of approach is the sociological one. Here the work of Mary Stewart van Leeuwen is helpful. She is thoroughly familiar with studies in the field, and is careful not to make unfounded statements of the kind one hears all the time, such as: complementarianism leads to greater rates of abuse, or: egalitarians have unhappy marriages.

In response to Liz: it sounds to me that you find it necessary to pigeonhole Sarah Sumner into a camp she does not self-identify with: the comp camp. Don’t you hate that when people do that to you? I honestly think Sumner’s approach might serve as a corrective to your own.

In response to Sue: Sumner’s approach to kephale in Paul marks an advance over many other discussions, including your own. For example, Sarah notes that kephale ‘head’ is used metaphorically by Paul. Simplistic glosses like ‘origin’ or ‘authority’ are inherently misleading. Kephale needs to be looked at in connection with Paul’s concurrent metaphorical use of soma ‘body.’ In Ephesians 5, the kephale metaphor is fleshed out in that sense.

As far as “unilateral submission” is concerned, like most egals, you are being less than honest when you fail to note that that in Ephesians 5:24, Paul asks wives to “submit to their husbands in everything.” Paul asks no such thing of husbands. He couldn’t have, without challenging head-on the hierarchical husband-wife, parent-child, master-slave relationships of his day.

Instead, Paul asks husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church: in so doing, patriarchy is challenged from within. Paul’s approach to slavery is similarly complex - just look at Philemon - and is structurally different from the approaches of both comps and egals today. Neither camp seems willing to admit this.

Sarah Sumner’s exegesis of Ephesians 5 is more faithful to that text’s emphases than is your approach. I would also point out that a biblically responsible complementarian will qualify the “in everything” as Andrew Compton did in a comment to one of my posts.

Finally, you allow real life facts as you understand them to overrule the teaching of scripture. The undeniable truth of which you speak - that comp males run the risk of using Paul’s teaching about submission to do anything but love their wives as Christ loved the church - becomes grounds for throwing out the comp framework altogether. It does not follow.

I say that as a pastor who respects, in those under my care, the comp framework of those who accept it, and the egal framework of those who accept it. The Gospel has a lot to say to people in both frameworks.

One’s salvation, one’s wellbeing, does not depend on being an egal, a comp, or a compegal, but on acceptance of God’s forgiveness in Jesus Christ. I steadfastly believe that anyone who suggests otherwise has turned from the grace of God to a gospel that is no gospel at all.

Comment by John Hobbins

July 4, 2008 @ 10:02 am

Mary,

Paul’s teaching in Ephesians 5, read in isolation from everything else he wrote and the rest of scripture, might lead and has led ill-intentioned and/or ungodly individuals to ask wives to “submit to their husbands in everything” in unhealthy ways.

But that isn’t the way Christians are supposed to read Scripture. Biblically faithful Christians have always believed that scripture interprets scripture. Once that is done, Paul asking wives to submit to their husbands in everything cannot and will not lead to abuse.

Now, if you reply that the cultural framework which Paul and Peter take for granted, in which lines of authority were very clear in husband-wife, master-slave, and parent-child relationships, is not a cultural framework you feel comfortable with, and which you have no intention of re-creating, as if, in so doing, greater faithful to scriptural teaching would be achieved, I concur with your reservations.

While I am aware that there have been, and still are, cultures in which the wife will address her husband as ‘Lord’ (dominus in Latin), and Peter cites the example positively when he encourages wives to submit to their husbands, even those who are unbelievers (1 Peter 3:6), I don’t think it is necessarily a sign of faithfulness to the Gospel to imitate that practice. On the other hand, I don’t think it is necessarily a sign of unfaithfulness either.

In short, Sarah Sumner’s defense of the servant-leader model of being a husband is not in contradiction with Ephesians 5, and in line with the total witness of the Scripture. This is quite apart from the discussion of how best to understand the complex metaphor of kephale-soma Paul employs therein. Traditional word-study approaches to the meaning of kephale are hopelessly flawed from a linguistic point of view (meaning is not located at the word-level, but at the discourse level) and from a point of view of poetics and rhetoric, since the specific usage of kephale and soma in a complex metaphor has not been given sufficient weight.

I also think it has been and still is possible for Christians within very patriarchal frameworks, including those in which wives address their husbands with honorific titles of respect which are connatural to said frameworks, to live in harmony with the teaching of Paul in Ephesians 5 and that of Peter in 1 Peter 3. I would think that is an obvious fact.

On the other hand, I think it is possible for Christians within an egal framework to live in harmony with Ephesians 5 and 1 Peter 3. Is it easy to do so? No. It it easy to do so within a comp framework. No, emphatically no.

As if the framework of gender roles one lives in, or chooses to live in, predetermines faithfulness to the Gospel or the opposite! It does not.

The comp egal debate deals with important issues, but they are not first-order issues. They are second-order issues. Those who think otherwise, on either side of the question, risk preaching a gospel at odds with that based on acceptance of God’s forgiveness in Jesus Christ.

Comment by Sue

July 4, 2008 @ 12:25 pm

I won’t respond to all of it but two sentences.

Finally, you allow real life facts as you understand them to overrule the teaching of scripture.

That is how we have established democratic governments and abolition of slavery. By allowing real life facts to overrule the teaching of scripture at first glance. If we wish to naively engage in teaching scripture with a disregard for real life, we return to the teaching that substance abuse, gambling, spousal abuse and many other things are not grounds for divorce. This is what many think the scripture teaches and they stick to it.

I wish to get beyond the “teaching of scripture” as law.

I am not saying that you do any of this, John, this is not in response to what you have written but a reflection on Sumners various statements. She would probably even agree with me, but she has not perhaps, made these things explicit in what I have read. I have no desire to set up a tension here. I understand her books to be part of the dialogue. I respect her voice and I wish the same for mine. So this is not a critique of conflict with her, but this is my voice, silenced elsewhere.

A wife should not have to have proof of physical violence in order to separate. I cannot agree with this implied position.

On kephale, I most certainly believe that the head - body metaphor is accurate and reflects Chrysostom’s take on this which I have written about before publically. He says that the head body metaphor reflects perfect unity. But Chrysostom also carefully argues that it does not represent a ruler-governed relationship, and this others fail to do.

I would also point out that a biblically responsible complementarian will qualify the “in everything” as Andrew Compton did in a comment to one of my posts.

Because complementarianism gives sinful males authority, the rule book required for this to be fair to wives in general is infinite. However any godly and kind person may have developed a personally adequate understanding of headship. I am not inclined to confront anyone’s personal behaviour but the teaching per se.

I would like to cite here some things said, by accomplished and articulate (complementarian) bloggers.

“I believe that the assumption of husbandly authority is abusive in itself, even if subtly and covertly, because it puts the wife’s will under the husband’s. It is, by its nature, disrespectful, and shows disregard of the wife.”

“headship is not domineering or abusive unless it means “authority” or “leadership” of women as a sex, or as wives. The problem, in my view, is not with headship, but with the prominent complementarian understanding of what being the “head” means.”

“I so agree that it is abuse even to just ascribe authority to the husband over the wife. On another blogsite it was described as being like a rape of the woman’s spirit or soul.”

These are the common beliefs of many complementarian women. This is not scripture. This is real life. These are not my words. I am not alone is speaking grief to the world on this.

This is from the comment thread which now tops 1200 on this post.

I am incredibly grateful that Denny Burk has allowed an open discussion on his blog. Evidently women have felt the need for space to express their profound emotional rejection of male-based authority in the home, and “over the wife.”

Comment by Sue

July 4, 2008 @ 12:41 pm

Once that is done, Paul asking wives to submit to their husbands in everything cannot and will not lead to abuse.

This is not real life, because “that” is never “done.”

Comment by John Hobbins

July 4, 2008 @ 2:48 pm

Suzanne,

I’m glad to see you speaking with respect for others, like Sarah Sumner, who do not see eye to eye with you. If you wish to comment on my blog in that spirit, you are welcome to do so.

I’m as happy as the next person to live in a democracy, indeed, in that peculiar democracy of the United States of America, on this 4th of July. The US is one of the few democracies in the world today to guarantee a very robust practice of free speech.

But I wouldn’t be so dumb as to claim that the Bible rules that form of democracy in and all others, democratic and non-democratic, out. I would rather argue that the kind of democracy US citizens enjoy and the constitutional monarchy of a country like Jordan are both ruled in by Scripture. What matters is how one acts within that framework. There certainly have been occasions when King Hussein has acted more honorably than I have ever seen an American president act.

The same sort of logic applies to the issues at hand.

Are you claiming that Chrysostom was not a patriarchalist and a hierarchalist? But he was; every serious researcher knows that. He also allowed his Christianity to reshape patriarchy from within to a greater extent than the other Church Fathers did. That is what makes his exegesis of particular interest to many today.

But like the rest of the Fathers, Chrysostom did not challenge per se the hierarchical arrangement of roles of his day in the husband-wife, parent-child, and master-slave spheres. He is not an egalitarian ante litteram. He is what Troeltsch and others call a “love-patriarchalist.”

You continue to state that anyone who is a patriarchalist and hierarchalist promotes a position that is “abusive in itself.” I have argued the contrary. One thing, in any case, should be clear: if patriarchalism and hierarchalism are abusive in and of themselves, then Paul, Peter, Chrysostom, Augustine, and countless others before and after them were wrong not to oppose it in whatever form it rears its ugly head: complementarianism and slavery are just two examples.

That would be honest and consistent, to say that, yes, Paul and Peter got it wrong, we know better. I have friends who say precisely that, and I respect that position.

I detest, on the other hand, the tendency of egals to make Paul and Peter into knights in shining armor whose sole purpose, it might appear, is deployment in the cause of routing the comps. This can only be accomplished by remaking Paul and Peter into a likeness not their own. It makes no more sense to do this than the tendency of comps to treat Paul and Peter as if they were the ghost-writers of the Danvers Affirmation. Phoney baloney. All of it. On both sides.

It’s time to admit that the Gospel can be lived out within a huge variety of cultures, most of which include forms of government, rules of the workplace, and family organization which are far from ideal from any number of points of view - yet said cultural norms are not specifically opposed in scripture. Indeed, many of them, in a given time and place, are said to enjoy - with provisos - God’s approval.

If this cannot be admitted, it might be better to look for a smaller, more sectarian God than the one portrayed to us in scripture.

Comment by John

July 4, 2008 @ 3:00 pm

You say: This is not real life, because “that” is never “done.”

Apparently then, we are to excise the guilty passage from scripture. I fail to see how this conclusion is less than inevitable.

Comment by Sue

July 4, 2008 @ 3:14 pm

Thank you for inviting me back to your blog. However, I am worried that you will always act as arbiter of what I can and cannot say on your blog (as is your right) so I appreciate this mediated forum.

I do not make Peter and Paul into knights in shining armour. I am working on a different level entirely. I am working on the level of the meaning of the texts, on the one hand, and on the level of real life, on the other. I do not claim to present a perfect synthesis. I present two problems. I am open to what Peter and Paul might have been saying.

I would like first to address the consitutional monarchy vs a democracy. You are correct in pointing out the equal functional capacity of these two. However, marriage, as an authority-submission relationship, governed by no more laws than the scriptures, is subject to abuse. The interpretation of Gen. 3:16 by complementarians, that the abuse of a sinful husband is a response to the rebellion of a sinful wife, places the judiciary blame on the wife. This is the formal stated position of the major speakers of complementarianism and is rightly deplored by many.

I would equate marriage as an authority-submission relationship to rule of kings by divine right. It took much soul-searching to establish a constitutional monarchy, to establish independence in the USA, to establish independent churches. These things all required that people go back to scripture and reinterpret it. The Reformation is based on the tradition of reinterpreting authority.

More later.

Comment by John

July 4, 2008 @ 4:16 pm

I can’t think of any arrangement that is not subject to abuse. Marriage, whether understood as an authority-submission relationship, or an egalitarian relationship, whether it is governed by (supposedly) sola scriptura, or a thousand laws added on top, is subject to abuse.

At almost every wedding I preach at - four or five are in the pipeline as we speak - I stress the contents of 1 Cor 13, written by that hard-bitten, unsentimental man named Paul. I don’t think anyone can read Paul’s definition of love without knowing, deep down inside, that it is true. Every word of it. I can preach confidently to groom and bride that if they but exemplify love as defined by Paul in their lives and in their marriage, everything will go fine, and their marriage will last until death intervenes.

Now, what difference does the gendered construction of authority one lives in make? As it happens, almost every couple I marry now are non-ideological egals, usually but not always the children of non-ideological comps. It is always a blast to talk about how things have changed so quickly, and not always for the better. (Those from families in which ideological egalitarianism rules the roost are the more likely ones to be attracted to ideological compism, but that is another story.)

The result is that in counseling and at the wedding, I look both of them in the eye equally, with all the combined gentleness and severity I can muster, and tell them: your marriage stands or falls based on your adherence to the concept of love found in 1 Cor 13.

In weddings and in counseling with comps, the situation, in a sense, is more interesting. I can talk freely about submission, obedience, and authority, concepts comps wish to understand positively - whether they succeed in doing so, that’s another matter. In theory, they are working with a full deck of cards, whereas egals work with only a half a deck. That’s because things like submission, obedience, and authority are profoundly biblical concepts, and egals tend to run away from them in capitulation to modernity, not out of faithfulness to scripture.

But get this. Just like in cards, people get cocky when they have a great hand to play. So often, comps lose because they think the cards will win it for them, and they stop thinking. You can have a wonderful array of concepts in your quiver, but each arrow must be shot with love, or it amounts to nothing, worse than nothing.

Is it really any different among egals?

I belong to a reformed branch of Christianity, the oldest of them all, the Waldensians. I know all about how bad Catholicism and traditionalisn are, but I also know it’s not that simple. Some of the most beautiful Christians I know are Roman Catholics. They work within a framework that is, in your words, “subject to abuse.” They work within a framework that abused my forefathers and foremothers in the faith.

And yet it has been one of the great spiritual turning points in my life to have been involved in the very very Roman Catholic movement known as the Focolari, and to have learned deeply from the witness and the word of Chiara Lubich and the mostly celibate women and men who form the core of that movement. Talk about authority! Talk about submission! Yet you would not believe how powerfully God has been at work through the Focolari. I just heard from home in Italy that their publishing house will put out a volume of my father-in-law’s sermons (in Italian). Yet my father-in-law, whom I love dearly, is an unreconstructed Barthian and - Communist! But you know, the Focolari, who take 1 Cor 13 to heart, can handle that.

Comment by Sue

July 4, 2008 @ 6:52 pm

John,

You write,

They work within a framework that is, in your words, “subject to abuse.”

No, I have explicitly said that complementarianism, as it is defined by the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, is abusive.

“Subsequent to the Fall the judgment pronounced on the woman included that her desire (t’shuqa) would be for her husband (Gen. 3:16), which in all likelihood conveys the woman’s sinful desire to manipulate and control her husband rather than to lovingly submit to him. This is suggested by the close parallel in the following chapter, where it is said that sin’s desire is for Cain, clearly in the sense of desire or mastery (gen. 4:7.)” Kostenberger

This doctrine teaches that women are created for submission, to function within a submission-authority relationship, and any expression of non-submission is sinful. The fact that a woman makes any decision independently of her husband, can be held up as her sinful rebellion. The husband’s sin is a response to the sin of the wife.

Unfortunately any decision on the part of a wife, any decision at all, can be held up as a pretext.

I can honestly say that in the many admirable traditional marriages that I have seen, this doctrine has been mercifully absent, and women are the mistresses of their own home. Sadly, the complementarianism of today, makes the wife have only a submissive role in all domains and arenas and every room in the house, to the authoritative role of the husband in all domains and arenas, and every room in the house.

This means that if the wife cooks a meal and cannot find the required vegetables in the market that day, and has chosen a substitute, she is in a state of non-submission.

Please do not make light of my examples. I am sure you must realize that I am not an ideological egal, I am egal by circumstance. I am ideologically against the official teaching of complementarianism, the ascription of prior sin to the woman for expressing personal will.

I am convinced that this conversation is significantly hampered by a lack of understanding each others terms. Let me once again express my respect for those who live appropriately within a traditional framework.

Comment by Sue

July 4, 2008 @ 7:46 pm

John,

I would like to respond to this paragraph.

To egals who criticize Sumner’s take on kephale: Sumner’s approach to kephale ‘head’ in Paul marks an advance over most other discussions. For example, Sarah notes that kephale ‘head’ is used metaphorically by Paul. Simplistic glosses like ‘origin’ or ‘authority’ are inherently misleading. Kephale needs to be looked at in connection with Paul’s concurrent metaphorical use of soma ‘body.’ In Ephesians 5, the kephale metaphor is fleshed out in that sense.

I find it difficult to believe that treating kephale as a metaphor is an advance, much as I respect this point. Chrysostom argued that the kephale - soma relationship, (kephale as a metaphor) was Paul’s use of the word.

“For if we are the Body of Christ, and severally members thereof, 1 Corinthians 12:27 and in this way He is our head, He cannot be the head of them who are not in the Body and rank not among the members.”

He then proceeded to explain that one could not take this metaphor in exactly the same way for the God Christ relationship, as for the man/woman relationship,

“Therefore if we choose to take the term, head, in the like sense in all the clauses, the Son will be as far removed from the Father as we are from Him. Nay, and the woman will be as far removed from us as we are from the Word of God. And what the Son is to the Father, this both we are to the Son and the woman again to the man. And who will endure this?”

So, one cannot say that taking kephale as a metaphor is an advance on other theologians. It is not. However, one can say that unpacking that metaphor is essential. Chrysostom continues,

“But they stumble against themselves. For if the man be the head of the woman, and the head be of the same substance with the body, and the head of Christ is God, the Son is of the same substance with the Father. Nay, say they, it is not His being of another substance which we intend to show from hence, but that He is under subjection.”

And he continues,

“But do you understand the term head differently in the case of the man and the woman, from what thou dost in the case of Christ? Therefore in the case of the Father and the Son, must we understand it differently also. How understand it differently? says the objector. According to the occasion . For had Paul meant to speak of rule and subjection, as you say, he would not have brought forward the instance of a wife, but rather of a slave and a master.”

So you see from this that Chrysostom carefully unpacked the metaphor to deny rule and subjection as the core meaning of the metaphor, but rather being of the “same substance” and later “first principle.”

This is then the meaning of the metaphor (for C), that the kephale-soma relationship is one of the same substance, a shared nature, of like passions, perfect unity and organic interdependence. Since two must come from one, to be of the same nature, it was important to establish a kephale, also called the arche by Cyril. This was, I believe, the also the first principle, aitia in Chrysostom.

So, an understanding of the terms arche, and aitia, and how this differs from a exousia of authority and submission are worthy concepts of contemplation, and I argue, allowable discussion.

You also truly say that Chrysostom is a gender patriarchalist. But I can only say that I am in conversation with these texts. I hve no desire to misrepresent him or any other author. There writings are available to anyone.

On another point, what do you think of the use of soteria in the household in Aristotle and how this relates to the use of soter in Eph. 5, I would be interested in hearing your take on that.

If Sumners also interacts with the writings of the church fathers on kephale, I would be most interested in hearing about that. I would like to know her take on the discourse on kephale in Chrysostom, Cyril and anyone else. I do not in any way wish to present myself as a scholar of the church fathers, and would like to hear what others have written on kephale.

I am interested in keeping the conversation open.

Comment by John

July 4, 2008 @ 8:03 pm

I have met many complementarians in my life. Some of them are among my friends.

I have yet to meet one who regards their wife as in non-submission because she “cannot find the required vegetables in the market that day.” Your example sounds like an odd little story from the Talmud - which is full of marvelous and beautiful anecdotes, but off-color ones, too.

There must be someone who believes what you imply complementarians generally believe. But with all due respect, you are setting up a straw man.

What complementarians believe and how they actually behave cannnot be determined by reading whoever you are getting the vegetable story from. Any more than what feminists believe and how they actually behave can be determined by reading Betty Friedan and reading her bio. Do not imitate the rhetoric of anti-feminists.

It’s nice that you find no grounds to criticize traditional frameworks. In my view, you are too generous by half.

On the other hand, you are too critical by half in your treatment of your arch-opponents, who are, it appears, evangelical comps of the Reformed persuasion.

I don’t see much rhyme nor reason in all of this.

Comment by Sue

July 4, 2008 @ 9:59 pm

I have met many complementarians in my life. Some of them are among my friends.

Same here. In fact, most of the women protesting Dr. Ware’s sermon are complementarian women. The rhyme and reason is that this teaching, that a wife owes unilateral submission in all things, and lives to fulfill only the will of the husband, has spread to my former church, and is being taught to vulnerable young people. I am not fighting a straw man. I wish I were.

I am sorry that you don’t like my vegetable story.

Comment by Sue

July 4, 2008 @ 10:25 pm

John,

You write,

It’s nice that you find no grounds to criticize traditional frameworks.

I wrote,

Let me once again express my respect for those who live appropriately within a traditional framework.

Correct me if I am wrong but is that the sentence that you were responding to? I regret that I am not able to keep track of the dialogue well enough to figure out which of my comments you are responding to.

Comment by John

July 4, 2008 @ 11:03 pm

I just got back from the fireworks. What an amazing sight.

Chrysostom is worth reading carefully. So are many other Fathers, even when they have views which do not reinforce our own. Tertullian and Augustine deserve a hearing. Otherwise, one falls prey to the danger of cherrypicking, and never really getting a sense of what is was like to be a Christian woman in Greco-Roman antiquity, the good and the bad. It is a fascinating topic.

Most of the stuff written by theologians regarding the Patristic period until recently is not particularly useful, except for general orientation. Theologians have tended to have an axe to grind of some sort. Trust me. I’m trained as one.

Just as is true in biblical studies, it has been, and still is, very hard for people to let people like Origen, Tertullian, Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine and Ambrose, the Gregories, etc., be themselves, peculiarities included, rather than what we wish they might have been. The same applies to the Reformers, to people like Zinzendorf and John Wesley, and so it goes.

It is depressing that the vegetable story reflects the views of anyone. It certainly does not surprise me that it does not reflect the views of complementarians generally. In that sense, I referred to it as a straw man. It is often the case that movement leaders say some really weird things. For example, it is not difficult to come up with some deliciously odd quotes from John Wesley, Dwight Moody, or Charles Finney, not about women in particular (that too, quite possibly), but about various subjects.

I have one final remark, and that has to do with terminology. Ultimately, terminology is about self-identification. If someone says they are complementarian, then they are. If someone says they are egal, they are. If someone says they aren’t either one, then they aren’t either one. Our usage of the terms has to be adjusted to the facts on the ground, not the other way around.

There is also a place for pointing out that each of the terms is a misnomer for x number of reasons. But it’s no way to start a conversation with someone by calling them by a label they reject, or refusing to call them by a label they accept.

The term ‘complementarian’ has come to have quite a broad usage. For example, traditional Catholics and Orthodox “let [the term] pass,” as they have said over at Touchstone magazine, because they share many of the concerns evangelical comps do, for example: a rejection of female presbyters and “neutered” hymnals and Bibles; a desire to conserve the concept of headship, which, they believe, on the general witness of the Fathers, implies a hierarchical dimension which they value positively. There is also a broader sense of agreement that stretches far beyond that.

If what you are saying is that evangelical comps could learn a thing or two by reading deeply in the Fathers, I heartily concur. If they did, their framework would be stretched but not broken.

In short, traditional Catholics and Orthodox sense a common bond with evangelical comps. Rightly so. In my view, evangelical egals have yet to come to grips with the reasons for this. It is simplistic and self-defeating to write the convergence off.

And guess what? Traditionalists in the Catholic and Orthodox branches of Christianity are enjoying a resurgence, not least among the young. Now, I’ve said it before: traditionalism is not beyond criticism, on responsible theological and biblical grounds, any more that compism and egalism are. So that’s not my point. My point is that it’s time to stop demonizing the various positions, and recognize that each of the many sides brings valid concerns to the table. That would be a minimum requirement for the debate to move beyond being a war and a shouting match to being a truly Christian conversation.

Comment by Sue

July 4, 2008 @ 11:57 pm

One of the trends which I feel I must continue to speak out on, and many complementarian women agree, is the teaching which caricatures the woman in this way,

“The fall introduced this illicit urge and tendency toward usurpation — bucking his authority,” Ware said. “What this [verse] calls for is respect for his authority and who he is as husband.”

Other terms used on the CBMW website to translate and interpret t’shuqa in Gen. 3:16 are “fighting” “resisting” “usurping authority” “attempting to master” “manipulate” “rebel” and so on. The list is long. The ESV footnotes have “desire against.” Those who speak for the CBMW concur, that the sin of woman is the overriding rejection of male authority and the attempt to overpower man.

The sinful husband on the other hand, is characterized as either abusive or passive. He could be either of these two or presumably somewhere in between.

But if we look back at Gender and Grace by Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen we read,

“In Gen. 3:16, the woman is being warned that she will experience an unreciprocated longing for intimacy with the man. … [she} wants a mate and she gets a master, she wants a lover and she gets a lord, she wants a husband and she gets a hierarch.” page 44

However, those who read the works of CNMW are denied this knowledge. The woman, who through inordinate desire for intimacy, receives abuse, is told that she is rebellious and resisting proper authority of the male. She has brought abuse on herself through lack of submission.

Yes, this is taught. Women are subjected to this kind of emotional abuse. Women are not being taught that it is their submission to abuse which brings on further abuse. And so the danger grows.

I was labeled egalitarian by others, not myself, but I need to be responsible for how I am labeled. If others, who call themselves complementarian, do not agree with this discourse on women, they need to be responsible for how they interact with this teaching. Many complementarian women are speaking against it.

Comment by Sue

July 5, 2008 @ 12:52 am

PS I happily read Augustine, but what of Tertullian would you recommend? I believe he said something somewhere which offended me.

Comment by Sue

July 5, 2008 @ 1:09 am

I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. I just wanted to admit that I have read a bit of Tertullian but not much and I don’t know what would be of value.

Comment by Liz

July 5, 2008 @ 1:33 am

“In response to Liz: it sounds to me that you find it necessary to pigeonhole Sarah Sumner into a camp she does not self-identify with: the comp camp. Don’t you hate that when people do that to you? I honestly think Sumner’s approach might serve as a corrective to your own.”

I would like to point out that I particularly wrote the first 2 posts on this thread because I wanted to promote a good attitude towards those who believe differently or explain their viewpoint in words and terminology which could result in misunderstandings.

Personally, I expect that people will sometimes put me into ‘camps’ or get the wrong idea about my beliefs - that is a fact of life. Try as we might to not offend or give occasion for people to make wrong assumptions, it happens!

Going back to my 2nd post (86905) I realise I wrote in a ‘black & white” manner which I will often discourage in others when I said “the book is undoubtably endorsing a complementarian view of marriage”

The word ‘undoubtably’ gives no room to move so I would change that comment to “As I read certain statements from the book, it seemed to promote a complementarian view of marriage”

The statements listed on the website are as follow…

“There are 3 main dynamics of biblical marriage
1. one-ness between head and body
2. sacrifice and submission
3. love and respect

The term ’servant leader’ was also used which is a current description of the role of a husband as perceived by complementarians.

In an interview with Prof.Sumner about her earlier book re men & women in the church, she made these statements when questioned about what she hoped to see as an outcome of people reading her book.
“I want to hear….’I want to be the kind of husband who trust God enough to exalt my wife as the Father exalts the Son’ or ‘I want to be the kind of wife who submits to her husband in everything”

One last thing…..the vegetable story is not unrealistic. This sort of thing happens among families where ‘headship’ is taken very seriously and we have been involved with couples who live like this and also could give you quotes from Christian books which tell stories of such happenings as examples of how to be a ‘good’ wife. People within academic circles may not experience such behaviour, but within the ‘rank & file’ church attenders it is quite commonplace.

Comment by John

July 5, 2008 @ 8:11 am

Suzanne,

Tertullian is offensive, on this issue and on others. But that’s the point. It’s essential to bend one’s ear and one’s heart to the teachings found in the Old and New Testament and among the Church Fathers and the Reformers and let them sting, even open up a wound or two, all within the context of a vital relationship with the One who loves all (even the enemy) and judges all (even, perhaps especially, his friends).

Not much learning takes place if we just ransack the Fathers and Reformers for quotes that back up our own positions.

Tertullian ends badly. I know, in some PC quarters, there are no unhappy endings, but let’s get real for a moment. Someone needs to write a sympathetic book about how the seeds of Tertullian’s destruction are already present in his orthodox period.

I know: it’s un-American to recommend reading a story without a happy ending. I have colleagues who won’t preach on a biblical passage unless they can make it seem to have a Hollywood ending. I like movies that end with a smooch as much as the next person, but the smooch doesn’t mean much if there are not tears in the eyes at the same time.

Comment by John

July 5, 2008 @ 8:33 am

A good way to handle issues like the one you mention re: Gen 3:16 is to put the matter in a larger context, such as, what have Jews and Christians thought about sexuality before the Fall and after redemption, in the age to come, down through the ages? It immediately becomes clear that believers have always been sharply divided on these questions. The same applies to the question of whether gender hierarchy precedes the Fall or is a consequence of it. It seems to me that the Fathers try to have it both ways.

Why anyone would expect these issues to be resolved one way or another this side of heaven is beyond me. I have my own, strongly held views, which happen to be in tolerable agreement with current cultural commonplaces. But this makes me suspicious of my own exegetical conclusions! Did I mention that feminist scholars I’ve read have been among my best teachers in the art of self-suspicion?

Am I being too honest here? Sorry, but I think that is what is often missing in this debate.

Beyond that, there are plenty of comp exegetes of Gen 3:16 who interpret the passage along rather different lines than the one you note (by the way, the interpretation you cite goes back to a woman exegete, I believe - the name slips me at the moment - in line with ordinary scholarly practice, attribution should go to her first of all).

The comp position is really weak if it must depend on K’s interpretation of choice of Gen 3:16. But K knows this, too, to judge from his wording.

Comment by John

July 5, 2008 @ 9:02 am

Liz,

most of my experience with comps comes through being a pastor and relating to non-ideological comps many of whom now have white hair, quite a number of whom are now celebrating silver, even 60th and 70th wedding anniversaries.

In the “non-ideological comp” classification I also include women - and they are not as unusual as some people want to make out - who will tell me they remember promising to obey their husbands and in their opinion, things started to go bad when the vows were changed. One look at their children’s marriages, if they even have remained married, reveals one source of this point of view. Egal marriages, too often, are a form of negative advertisement. In my view, the wisest of the women of the many generations of women who obeyed their husbands recognize that there is no going back to marriage as they experienced it, with both positive and negative results for their children and now grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

True, a number of non-ideological comps who now have white hair are downright peeved, and rightly so, at their children and grandchildren who have not stuck out their unhappy marriages as they did, with obvious and very serious negative effects on their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

How does it look in terms of young comps from a pastor’s point of view? Well, it has to be pointed out I work in a predominantly egal context, the United Methodist Church. But I notice that, among the ubiquitous parenting classes that young on-fire Christians like to start up, there is an almost universal liking for a kind of comp-lite approach to the questions at hand.

I realize that the kind of people you are likely to minister to, and I have no doubt that God is blessing your ministry, and I wish you only the best with it - are going to be recovering comps of some rather hard-core version, sometimes literally - from my point of view, okay - a pornographic version of compism.

As for vegetable comps, the young people in the congregations I have served and serve who eat up comp-lite resources would giggle their hearts out at the story.

Comment by Sue

July 5, 2008 @ 10:46 am

John,

It appears that I remember Tertullian rather well then after all. And since I am a woman, who lived under a similar regime, perhaps it stings even more for me than for those for whom it is purely academic. Perhaps someone who was reared in that reality, does know what it sounds like. You speak to me as if I had not read the church fathers in general, or the reformers, or anything else. I was reared on this stuff.

On Gen 3:16, just because women have been taught that they are the cause of their own violent assault for thousands of years, that is no reason to go on with it. Naturally, as you say, history has been divided on this.

On t’shuqa, Grudem cites Susan Foh, but other complementarian authors seem not to depend on her. This teaching that t’shuqa means that women “rebel” or “control” and “manipulate” is basic and even, I would say, on the CBMW website, pervasive, a foundational belief.

I sat and listened to a famous complementarian who is a friend of mine, expound on t’shuqa, that women rebelling against their role is the cause of divorce. Among those women I know who are divorced, some had been stay-at-home moms until their husband left them for a younger woman. How hurtful a sermon that was. I had a short discussion with him afterwards and asked if he thought that was the case for the people that he knew, that it was the wife’s rebellion, and he said “not so much” or something of that order. People need to get real.

CBMW stigmatizes women and they need to stop. They say that a complementarian man will exalt women. But they insult and tear down women at any chance. There is an industry around proving that Junia was a man. It will pop up again. There is an industry around proving that women were created for subordination. There is an industry around getting women out of the pulpit and they succeeded in my former church. How do they exalt women? (I don’t want to hear about the baby thing. We are all over 50 here.)

John,

You are comparing generations not ideologies. Certainly my mother vowed to obey my father. And she became the mistress of the home. If he did not like a vegetable he politely and without comment did not eat the vegetable and was exempt from eating it by my mother, who made us children eat it.Essentially, I would say, my father did not have to obey my mother, but we all had to. They treated each other as equal and opposite. That is not the case for “complementarianism” where the man reflects the authority of the father, and the wife reflects the submission of the son. Each one only reflects one aspect of the image of God, ever. The wife has no authority, and the man has no submission. He is to care for, but only as a function of authority.

I know lots of people of the older generation as well, and that is simply another conversation. There is absolutely no way to compare the older generation and our generation. Comp teaching proper only came on in the 70’s, so those that you are talking about are traditional, no matter what they call themselves now. That is an entirely different thing.

I know two women my age in comp marriages who have scars on their wrists. They don’t have professions, and they don’t know how to leave. I would say that the damage is way beyond a divorce. I sat and listened for three hours. She asks, how will I get the windows cleaned. “I can’t do the higher one’s myself, and I do not have permission to call someone in. I have no knowledge of our finances and I am not allowed to hire people.” The husband is quite wealthy BTW in a highly paid profession.

The non-Christian women that I know are either in very stable, non-hierarchical marriages, or divorced because their husband found a younger woman. They are not rebellious feminist career women.

I refuse to have all the disdain and blame for divorce and unhappiness in this world placed on the women of my generation.

Men and women do things that are hurtful and damaging, equally. Both men and women can abuse, abandon, and betray. There is enough finger pointing that has gone on. I maintain that the complementarian teaching, that women were subordinate in creation and by their rebellion bring abuse upon themselves, shifts the blame from man to woman and does not protect women but exposes them to further abuse.

It is time to stop the emotional abuse of interpreting the Bible to put down and blame women.

Back to the vegetable story. It is time that people stop laughing at abuse, psychological or otherwise. It is in very poor taste. Like some vegetables I know.

Comment by John

July 5, 2008 @ 11:18 am

No one, of course, is laughing at abuse.

But as soon as the argument is reduced to recounting stories of abuse endured within one framework or the other, what is one to do? It is a conversation stopper.

And you are welcome, Suzanne, to your point of view, which grows directly out of your experience. No one can or should take that away from you.

As a pastor, I deal with a different range of experiences than you do. Abuse is one problem among many in the marriages of the people in my congregation. It is not the most common one - unless “abuse” is defined in such a way that it is the constant experience of most married couples (some people do define it this way). Divorce for foolish reasons is.

I encourage both egals and comps to work out their salvation with fear and trembling within the frameworks they are comfortable with, and seek to see the Gospel speak to both situations. You will never be happy with this. It’s one of my many failings you will have to put up with, I’m afraid.

I think you are looking for some way to pin the world’s problems on the authority-submission template.
I cannot subscribe to this view, nor to the dishonesty that results when those who hold this view treat biblical texts that presuppose that template, but wish to claim nevertheless that the biblical texts in question presuppose another template.

Comment by Sue

July 5, 2008 @ 11:35 am

John,

Some laugh at abuse. You live and work in an environment largely untouched by the teachings of CBMW. I have lived the opposite. The comments are climbing on Denny Burk’s posts, to 1260. These are complementarian and former complementarian women who have had enough.

Many women are not “comfortable” within the complementarian framework of CBMW. But as those who are “under authority” they have no way to “work out their salvation” except by further submission, hence the vegetable story.

The contrast between you and me is not pastor and layperson, scholar and schoolteacher; the contrast is between a man who has lived in an egalitarian reality and a woman who has lived in a complementarian reality.

I think you are looking for some way to pin the world’s problems on the authority-submission template. I cannot subscribe to this view, nor to the dishonesty that results when those who hold this view treat biblical texts that presuppose that template, but wish to claim nevertheless that the biblical texts in question presuppose another template.

Whose dishonesty are you referring to? And can you give an example of what you are talking about.

This is a serious charge. Could you define it and quote an example. I don’t want to misunderstand you.

If you choose to dismiss the research of Linda Belleville, whose work I use and cite, you would do well to read it first, and argue against it point by point, rather than tossing out words like “dishonesty.”

Comment by Mary

July 5, 2008 @ 11:48 am

Yes, John, Scripture does interpret Scripture, which is why I don’t accept that Sumner is accurate in saying that “servant leader” is an acceptable way to understand KEPHALE in Eph. 5, and that she deals either inaccurately or not at all with “Submit yourselves to one another out of reverence for Christ” as applying to husbands. It certainly DOES apply to husbands. Expecting Scripture to tell husbands as a class that they must submit to their wives, or else that isn’t expected of them, is ludicrous. Again, because Scripture does indeed interpret Scripture…at least when one reads them for what they say instead of looking for a loophole to support a societal norm, such as patriarchy.

Comment by Mary

July 5, 2008 @ 11:56 am

Something occurs to me, John.

Perhaps you could show where Scripture tells husbands to be authorities over their wives. I’d like it to be as explicit, of course, as that sadly-missing “husbands, submit to your wives” that you and Sumner rightly say is missing in Scripture. Because, since it must be spelled out to husbands as a class in order to be taken seriously — being a general commandment, such as submitting to one another not being specific enough to apply to husbands — it certainly must be found in Scripture, if indeed it is to be taught and counseled and preached as a necessary principle.

I think it’s important to note that Scripture also has no GENERAL principle of telling us to be authorities over one another, either. So, until someone can show categorically that at least a class-specific commandment exists, given the lack of a general commandment, I will continue to believe that it is both unscriptural and ungodly to teach that husbands are to be authorities over their wives. Since Scripture interprets Scripture, as you have said and I have heartily agreed, such a command would go against a number of commands that adult believers are NOT to behave in such a worldly way over one another.

Comment by John

July 5, 2008 @ 12:52 pm

Suzanne,

I also want to affirm something I hear you saying: that nothing is gained from blaming women as a class OR blaming men as a class for the woes of this world.

It also appears that you are fine with traditional authority-submission templates, so long as they don’t reach pathological extremes, such as that found in Tertullian or in vegetable comps. If so, that would be another point of agreement. I want to understand Tertullian and vegetable comps. I want to figure out why they think like they do, and meet them on their ground. But I don’t want to become like them.

On the other hand, I don’t think the relationship your mother and father had was typical of their generation, though it was one possible variation on a theme, and still is today - I’ve seen it often enough - among, for example, conservative Lutherans. But let me recount, briefly, another, more common subtype I know of first hand.

It goes like this: the man of the house, de jure, makes the important decisions (outside of Kinder, Kuche, und Kirche). The lady of the house defers to him on principle. Unless he gets it wrong - alas, this happens. Then she intervenes, on the basis of whatever moral authority she has, and a tense moment ensues, in which the spiritual and moral maturity of everyone involved is on the line, and there is no script to follow. The stories that come out of these tense moments are often searingly beautiful - or the opposite: the death of a family, the loss of trust and intimacy, is also a result on occasion.

(In well-functioning egal families, by the way, I’m not so sure things are very different. In any case, a couple that must constantly negotiate who has the final say on matters large and small will self-destruct on that basis.)

The situation as I see it is this: comp families need to be encouraged to model their sense of hierarchy on the saner versions of that template known to us from Christian history. They can and should read Chrysostom, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there are good authors to read on the subject among old-school Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, and so on. I actually think there are good comp-lite materials available by contemporary authors. My wife Paola, I know, has chosen to use some on occasion (with some gnashing of the teeth; she is a dyed-in-the-wool egal). I prefer to work straight from the Bible myself, but that’s my training.

Egal families need to move beyond the outright rejection of the exercise of authority to a wise and routinized use of it. For example, if that means that the woman of the house runs the show with respect to Kinder, Kuche, und Kirche (sorry: that means children, the kitchen, and church) and the man of the house, with respect to the rest, so be it. I certainly can think of worse arrangements.

Comment by Dana Ames

July 5, 2008 @ 1:06 pm

John #86928,

I have noticed the convergence between _some_ evangelical comps and RC and EO. The issues you cite are real, but not always why people turn in that direction.

Sometimes people flee one branch of Christianity for another, trying to get away from what they see as the dissolution of things they hold dear, and thinking that all will be well if they can just get somewhere where those things aren’t falling apart. I refer you to Rod Dreher, who became RC and then EO. Certainly his story is not that one-dimensional, but he freely admits that’s a significant part of it.

I changed branches of Christianity, from RC to EvProt, because I believed the theology better interpreted the bible. I am on the way to changing again, because I believe EO theology better interprets the bible. One of the ways this gets worked out is that in EO hardly anyone is tied up in knots with hierarchy in the home. Domestic violence is specifically repudiated on the theological grounds that all *humans* are created in the image of God and deserve respect- no differentiation whatsoever between men and women as human, created in the image of God, and deserving respect. I find that encountering the idea in EO theology of what being a Person means, and what is understood by being in communion with one another as Persons, and what that means, Prot notions about “egalitarianism” is actually rather complementary :) -and “complementarianism” get blown away in the wind…

My experience growing with devout RC parents was that both the official teaching and the lived-out practicality had nothing to do with the issues over which “comps” and “egals” are fighting. It was very simple: love and respect one another, and let each person in the marriage do what they are capable of and gifted for doing, for the benefit of the family. That’s the deeper -and much more sensible- reason the RC’s “let the term pass”. Hierarchy is really not about who’s in charge in the family.

In fact, in the EO marriage ceremony, there are no vows. Eph 5:21-28 is read, but not exegeted- (for that, one would be referred to the Fathers, who were on the whole, as I’ve encountered them, more generous than we typically give them credit for if we haven’t read them…) There are blessings and prayers- and the “crown of martyrdom” is held over both heads. Meaningfully and sincerely asking one another for forgiveness is highly valued in EO. (Divorce is taken very seriously and is a grave failing and a sin, but dealt with as a reality of life, like other sin. If the marriage should fail, one is not excommunicate because of it as in RC. Marriage after divorce is “allowed”, with much pastoral guidance.)

Hierarchy in RC and EO is about apostolic succession and how that reaches to and through bishops and priests, and, in RC, deacons. In terms of the liturgy, priests/bishops are male not because being male is somehow “worth more” than being female, but because the liturgy is the real “drama” of worship uniting heaven and earth in and out of time- Jesus unites them both and brings life from one to the other, and Jesus was incarnate as a male human. (The point is his humanity, not his maleness.) I don’t have a problem with that. I also don’t have a problem with Prots ordaining women.

RC and EO- especially EO- are in no way hung up about qualified women teaching seminarians or mixed groups, or preaching. Even from the pulpit.

Search the I’net for “restoration of Orthodox diaconate to women” and see that, though this is not likely to happen soon, there is no true theological problem with women ordained as deacons, because the diaconate in EO is not anything like an “apprentice priesthood”. It had a different function entirely.

Some thoughts for your consideration.

Comment by Sue

July 5, 2008 @ 1:20 pm

John,

I am responding here to a comment that you made oh your own blog.

“It becomes clear that the concept of ’source’ was heard by mother-tongue exegetes, but so was the concept of ‘authority.’ The Fathers, including Chrysostom, understood a passage like Ephesians to support a hierarchical model of authority in marriage - rightly so: that’s why the metaphor is used by Paul in the context of asking wives to submit to their husbands in all things.

But the Church Fathers Christianized the hierarchical “Aristotelian” model with greater or lesser thoroughness. My admiration is strongest for those who did so with thoroughness.”

First, let me preface this by saying that Chrysostom was patriarchal. However, I have not yet found that he interpreted the word kephale as authority.

In his homily on Ephesians 5, he writes,

“Then after saying, The husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is of the Church, he further adds, and He is the Saviour of the body. For indeed the head is the saving health of the body. He had already laid down beforehand for man and wife, the ground and provision of their love, assigning to each their proper place, to the one that of authority and forethought, to the other that of submission.”

Do you think that he is deriving authority from the word kephale? Or is he assigning to kephale the meaning of soteria, the preservation/health/security of the household found in Aristotle?

We have to take this in conjunction with his homily in 1 Cor. 11 where he explicitly denies that “Christ is the head of the body” refers to ruler and governed. I believe that Chrysostom presupposes authority and submission in marriage for other reasons. He believes that this is the only way to avoid contention in sinful humanity - Aristotelian.

However, he also recognizes that if a husband acts the tyrant (authenteo) that will create dissension in the wife - the opposite of what I have quoted earlier. And so, where some stigmatize women for spurnng the authority of the husband and tell the husband that he must lead, Chrysostom said that only gentle affection will win over a wife, and not authority. He writes,

“She is of God’s fashioning. Thou reproachest not her, but Him that made her; what can the woman do?”

“Though your wife complain, yet be not annoyed— it is her love, not her folly— they are the complaints of fervent attachment, and burning affection, and fear.”

“Yea, though thou see her looking down upon you, and disdaining, and scorning you, yet by your great thoughtfulness for her, by affection, by kindness, you will be able to lay her at your feet.”

And so Chrysostom Christianizes the Aristotelian model which he presupposes. However, others today effectually paganize Christianity, by putting authority and submission at the centre of the union of man and woman rather than love.

I disagree that Chrysostom uses kephale as authority, but rather as soteria, and I find that given his presuppositions, he Christianizes his pagan Greek paradigms.

I do not believe that Chrysostom’s paradigms are appropriate in the 21st century, any more than slavery is. I do say that we need to be extremely careful and actually have some evidence that Paul meant authority when he used the word kephale. I absolutely do not find evidence that kephale meant authority prior to Paul’s writing the epistles and not until long after.

If you are aware of this evidence then perhaps you would point me to it.

Comment by Sue

July 5, 2008 @ 1:33 pm

John,

We have cross-posted. Of course, separate domains of authority is one appropriate model in my view, not the best, and subject to abuse. In the authority-submission model, undiluted, the wife has no authority, even over vegetables. Don’t laugh, John, yes, I am making this funny. But what do you want me to do, tell some other stories that would make us all cry.

What I protest the most is that you propose that treating kephale as a metaphor and not looking at “soure” vs “authority” is an “advance.” An advance on whom, I would ask.

You also suggest that someone is being “dishonest” but I don’t know who.

You use loaded language without quotes. I use loaded language with quotes.

My problem is that the teachings themselves cause real misery. Total misery. The teachings of ideological complementarianism is dangerous to the physical health of men and women.

Thank you, Dana, for confirming what I have read elsewhere.

The teaching that men and women reflect the image of God in that the husband reflects the authority of the providing and sending God, and the wife reflects the submission of the sent and dying Christ, needs to be eradicated. Absolutely and totally eradicated.

Comment by John

July 5, 2008 @ 2:00 pm

Mary,

I don’t see a difference between asking someone, insofar as they belong to a particular class (wife, child, slave) to submit to someone else insofar as they belong to a particular class (husband, parent, master), and asking someone to recognize someone else’s authority.

It’s no accident, for example, that Peter moves seamlessly from, once again, asking wives to submit - not husbands - to the example of a wife calling her husband “Lord.”

Honesty would be to say flat out: Neither Paul nor Peter say “husbands, submit to their wives,” which is what they would have said if they were upholding an egalitarian template for marriage.

The fact is, they were not upholding an egalitarian template for marriage. They were upholding the culturally given, hierarchically structured template of the society they lived in, with respect to the husband-wife relationship, the master-slave relationship, and the parent-child relationship. At the same time, they gutted those templates of the potential evil that they often entail by asking, for example, men to love their wives as Christ loved the church.

(Of course even then, especially then, Nietzsche would say, and he was no dummy, though he was a bit unstable, patriarchy is subject to abuse. But this isn’t an argument about what framework is more dysfunctional in practice, inclined to break down altogether, or provides, in practice, greater opportunity for abuse. Or, if it is, one might look at how the Bible treats systems of government as an analogy. For example, Samuel didn’t have anything good to say about monarchy, but God accedes to the people’s request, and promises to bless them through it. The Bible is full of promises that God will bless through patriarchy as well. But that is still not the same thing as saying that we should throw away democracy, and return to monarchy, or throw away egalitarianism, and return to patriarchy. On the other hand, we should not think too highly of either democracy or egalitarianism, as if the Gospel entails them. It did not, it does not, and it will not.)

Now, I’m fine with someone saying: the culturally given templates we take for granted today are different from the ones Paul and Peter took for granted. Since, like Paul, our first goal is to see people accept God’s forgiveness in Jesus Christ, we need to be all things to all people in our day, and therefore we will now take the egalitarian template as our point of departure, and try to Christianize that as Paula and Peter tried to Christianize patriarchy. The Christian content will be the same: the theological virtues (faith, hope, and love) and a healthy exercise of authority which will also involve honoring and shaming people as the circumstances require (I don’t actually expect you to agree with me that we need to learn to shame people again, unless it is for “universally” recognized sins like racism and homophobia, but I throw this detail into the discussion to make sure that you aren’t lulled into thinking that I am a happy-go-lucky egal, which I’m not).

Now, Sarah Sumners does not take this route. A scholar both Sarah and I treasure, Mary Stewart van Leeuwen, on the other hand, is very capable of thinking historically about theology and the construction of gender roles (watch for her forthcoming about C. S. Lewis and his journey in this respect).

Instead, she does what responsible theologians are very good at: she interprets, as you do, one scripture in light of another. She opts for continuing the Pauline and Petrine tradition of giving gender-differentiated advice to husbands and wives.

Now, I call this honest exegesis. I’m not asking you to follow suit. But I would think it a step forward for an egal to admit that (1) Sumner is faithful to the total witness of scripture in her exegesis; not least of all, because (2) she puts first things first (the theological virtues).

If you can turn a comp into an egal without destroying their enthusiasm for Christ and his Word, be my guest. I say the same to comps. Scarred comps, no less than scarred egals, are the first to benefit from the fact that there is more than one framework available in which one can live out the Christian faith in a positive, life-affirming way.

Comment by Sue

July 5, 2008 @ 2:10 pm

Now, I call this honest exegesis. I’m not asking you to follow suit.

John, you constantly throw these kinds of phrases at people without any evidence.

Comment by John

July 5, 2008 @ 2:26 pm

Dana,

thanks for many wise observations. I have many RC and EO friends, men and women, who do not see the exclusion of women from the office of presbyter as a deal-breaker. Some of them are pained about it, even very much, but everyone is willing to leave it up to the Holy Spirit, who may or may not give us a task in preparation for a future as yet unrevealed.

Even though I am happy to be part of a tradition in which women can be presbyters, and I see God blessing many people (and me) through them, I also see God blessing people in marvelous ways through arrangements and patterns specific to RCism and EOxy, arrangements and hierarchies and abstinences (like vows of chastity and poverty) Prots are clueless about, perfectly clueless.

I recently officiated at a wedding in which the bride was an EO turned evProt. I enjoyed so much integrating the “crown of martyrdom” teaching into the wedding ceremony, as well as the “king and queen” motif co-natural to Judaism as well. Her grandma, who remains EO, gave me a smooch of a look in response I treasure to this day.

In Friuli, Italy, where I served as a pastor, a term of affection used in marriage is that of calling the other ‘mia crucis’ - my cross: that kind of earthiness is possible, perhaps, if and only if people really accept that their marriage vows are unbreakable. No, I don’t mean in an absolute, absolute sense, only in an absolute sense, if you get my meaning.

Comment by molly

July 5, 2008 @ 2:51 pm

Interesting conversation.

John, you’ve been repeatedly saying things like,
“Egal families need to move beyond the outright rejection of the exercise of authority to a wise and routinized use of it.”

To me, it sounds like you are relegating “egalitarianism” more with the cultural non-hierarchal status quo for relationships, versus a Biblically derived way of relating. Whereas to me, egalitarianism (the idea that one spouse is not over the other spouse in a predetermined gender hierarchy) comes from a Biblically-derived deeply thought-out place. Egalitarianism means mutual submission, mutual respect, mutual nurture, etc.

Mutual submission exists based on concepts of authority, obedience, and submission (something you have said egalitarians do not like, which again, I suggest comes from defining egalitarianism as if it’s the same thing as the current cultural status quo versus a deeply thought out Biblical paradigm).

Mutual submission means that one party is usually submitting to another party at any given moment. It’s just that instead of making it *always* the female submitting, in an egalitarian setting the submitting depends on an authority/submission structure that both parties have agreed upon.

This year, for example, my husband is “in charge” of homeschooling our five kids. This means I submit to his choice of curriculum, activities, etc. We’ve decided together that he will be the one in authority in those matters. Last year I was the one in authority over those matters. That’s not to say there isn’t discussion and advice asked both ways. But one of us is fully given to the task, and the other comes in more as a support role. Every year, we rethink it and make a mutual decision based on what appears best for our family life that year.

So for me, true egalitarianism does not shy away from authority and submission, but practices those two things OUTSIDE the boundaries of predetermined gender hierarchy. True egalitarianism is *not* the same thing as the non-hierarchal cultural status quo.

Warmly,
Molly

Comment by John

July 5, 2008 @ 2:51 pm

Suzanne,

if you wish to show that Sarah Sumner’s exegesis of Ephesians 5 is less than honest, be my guest. I humbly wait for your proofs. You are welcome to work off of my summaries; Sarah had no objections to them.

I do have a honesty test for egals in relation to Paul and Peter’s teaching on the issues we have been discussing. I have one for comps, too, but I only reveal that one to egals after they have taken the egal test and have cussed me out thoroughly as a result. Of course, it takes a degree of arrogance, and a sense of humor, to administer such tests. I only pop the questions to those who ask for them. Are you asking?

I would like to point out that Chrysostom supported the exercise of authority of the husband over the wife so long as it did not degenerate into authentein as he uses the term: domineering. That has always been the trick within a authority-submission template: how to be lord without lording it over someone. This is why a Christianization of patriarchy inevitably involves a servant, or Christlike, use of authority as its touchstone. But you, because you reject patriarchy root and branch, reject this move.

I have never found it productive to argue this point with true blue egals who are not used to thinking about Scripture historically. Indeed, it would be tasteless on my part to argue the point with you, given what you have been through as you have recounted online.

Still, I wonder if you might admit that nevertheless, just this sort of move is at the heart of Paul’s gender-differentiated exhortation in Ephesians 5.

Comment by Sue

July 5, 2008 @ 3:04 pm

John,

You wrote this on the basis of your own knowledge of Greek.

“It becomes clear that the concept of ’source’ was heard by mother-tongue exegetes, but so was the concept of ‘authority.’”

All I am asking is that you defend it. I don’t want to argue with Sumners book or your summaries, because I don’t know where she ends and you begin. Let me ask again, what evidence do you have that kehpale entailed authority either before Paul or after Paul?

Still, I wonder if you might admit that nevertheless, just this sort of move is at the heart of Paul’s gender-differentiated exhortation in Ephesians 5.

That is one interpretation. I am holding out on my interpretation until I can get some basic vocabulary nailed down. I have invited you to dialogue on this.

Overall, I don’t find your treatment of kehpale or authority and submission convincing.

Women in the priesthood is not a deal-breaker for me. It is the total authority of the male and the total deprivation of authority for the female, which creates an environment that is better for dogs and fish. Even a cat won’t touch it.

Comment by Sue

July 5, 2008 @ 3:07 pm

What I really meant was that it is better for vegetables.

Comment by tiro

July 5, 2008 @ 3:09 pm

86914 John writes,
“In short, Sarah Sumner’s defense of the servant-leader model of being a husband is not in contradiction with Ephesians 5, and in line with the total witness of the Scripture.”

The problem begins with the idea that a husband is a leader to his wife. It’s a simple word used a fair amount in the NT, but it’s never used of husbands. So why do we think we can insert the idea into “head of”. Also, this encourages the idea of wives as followers, which is also never used of women in the NT. So why does anyone think that they can insert that into the use of “body of”.

Part of the problem of understanding the Biblical meaning of upotassomai is that it isn’t about a wife’s RESPONSE to what a husband might ask. That is only a fringe area. The primary meaning of (upotassomai) arranging of oneself under another, is to so arrange one’s attitude and actions so as to support the well being of the other, at all times and in everything. This is not dependent upon waiting for a husband to ask or demand something. And one’s response to his requests and demands should ALSO remain within the primary meaning of arranging one’s attitude and actions to support the husband’s well being. Sometimes, husband’s ask things that demean themselves, the marriage, and the wife. A wise woman will seek God for a more appropriate response other than unthinking compliance.

Comment by John

July 5, 2008 @ 3:28 pm

Molly,

first of all, hats off to you and your husband for the way you do things. I think the label you give it is perfectly defensible: a deeply-thought-out biblical egalitarianism. Of course, I’m not saying that your way is without problems of its own. Nor are you.

What I am saying is that, as far as I can tell, you have one-upped Paul by doing without the gender-differentiated exhortation he offers in Ephesians 5. You have re-written the passage in your flesh such that 5:25 now also reads,

“Wives, love your husbands, just as Christ loved the church,” and 5:24 now also reads, “Now as the church submits to Christ, so also husbands should submit to their wives in everything.”

It takes a real man, and a very good man, to accept the last revision, and, as Flannery O’Connor wrote, “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” So this teaching is not for everyone. But a real man, in an egalitarian cultural setting, ought to be able to accept it, confident that in so doing, he will loving his wife as Christ loved the church, and gave himself up for her.

This is what I imagine Paul to be saying from heaven (meanwhile, Tertullian and his ilk look on from purgatory): “That’s smart of you, Molly. I needed to give differentiated advice to husbands and wives within the historical and cultural setting I worked in, and to which God accommodated his revelation in my day. You are doing likewise in your day. I’m not going to let you know already which of the two frameworks, which coexist in your day, is truer, ultimately to the Gospel, or more conducive to its flourishing. I didn’t get to know that in my day, though I wondered about it now and then, when I saw that Phoebe was, after all, a better preacher than I was, and after God had me say, in Christ there is neither male nor female.”

In short, I don’t think it’s wise for anyone, comps, egals, compegals, to look at the great set of cards they have in their hand, how biblically true they are, and then rest on their laurels (I’m not suggesting you are). Whichever framework you choose to live out your married life, the hard work begins after the choice has been made. And the hard work is the same in all frameworks.

Comment by John

July 5, 2008 @ 3:44 pm

Suzanne,

you say: It is the total authority of the male and the total deprivation of authority for the female, which creates an environment that is better for dogs and fish. Even a cat won’t touch it.

Can’t argue with that. For the version of compism you describe, “vegetable” is too weak an adjective. “Pornographic” comes to mind.

But I see and hear about a lot of young men and women turning to comp liteism for a framework. Especially when I talk to friends in campus ministry. Which is not what you are talking about.

It’s not that surprising, really, if they come from broken homes (I do), in which egalitarianism as a framework made it easier, not harder, for their parents to give up on an unhappy or unsatisfying marriage and find greener pastures.

There are also the scarred children of egals who come uninvited to my confirmation classes and join the church against their parents’ wishes, parents whose egalism consisted in their belief that they could be equally mean to each other, and are now on their second, third, or fourth “try.”

So the children of these very egalitarian relationships look for a model of marriage with more structure, clearer lines of authority. Can you blame them?

Comment by John

July 5, 2008 @ 4:10 pm

Suzanne,

but I have never presented my views on the issues at hand except in terms of comments on the views of others, such as Sarah and Jim Sumner, Carolyn Osiek, Bonnie Thurston, Andrew Lincoln, and Mary Stewart van Leeuwen. I understand why you might want to disregard their take and their research on the issues and concentrate on my stray comments. It is hard work to plough through their work, except that of Sarah and Jim Sumner, who write at a popular level.

My comments, divorced from the conclusions of the research of these heavy hitters, are necessarily unconvincing. As I did in my posts, I do now: I recommend their work, the bibliography I provide. Ultimately, you will want to measure your reflections against theirs, not mine.

Furthermore, it’s fine with me if you haven’t made up your mind yet on the overall sense of passages like Ephesians 5, 1 Peter 3, and 1 Tim 2. Most of us do not have that luxury. We have working hypotheses, and we go with them. Perhaps you have a working hypothesis or two yourself.

It does seem that you think that no one has gotten these things right yet. Here I differ with you completely. For example, my understanding of the household codes, including the part that concerns the husband-wife relationship, works within a broad scholarly consensus.

That doesn’t mean it is necessarily right. But it does mean that when you say that my take on “kephale and authority is not convincing,” your wording itself suggests that you have yet to even frame the question in a way that scholars outside of the hothouse egal-comp debate would accept as helpful and constructive. So long as you frame your questions in ways that are conducive to scoring points for your side, you will not go far. Not far at all.

Comment by John

July 5, 2008 @ 4:28 pm

Tiro,

I think most of your individual points stand up to critical scrutiny, but do not amount to substantive criticism of Sumner’s position.

Your most questionable move is to etymologize the meaning of the verb upotassomai, as if that solved anything. It does not. Instead, one must look at usage and context. In terms of usage and context, this verb is what one expects in household codes in which one side of a bilateral relationship (wife-husband, child-parent; slave-master) is expected to submit, and the other to exercise authority.

It’s not that hard to grasp this. But it hurts, right? It still hurts me a bit. I grew up in Madison WI, the Berkeley of the Midwest, and I’m still inclined to think that the well-adjusted egalitarian culture I absorbed from the time I was knee-high to a grasshopper is the beautiful truth, period. Full stop. How dare God accommodate his revelation to cultural norms at variance with the ones I grew up with in Madison! Jesus should have been born in Madison or Berkeley, and if that couldn’t be arranged, at least Paul should have. If the weather wasn’t so bad, Vancouver would have made an excellent choice, I’m sure others will point out.

It’s not upotassomai that’s odd here (except for us). It’s agapein. That’s what’s new, and sent eyebrows furling.

Comment by Sue

July 5, 2008 @ 5:02 pm

John,

There is no difference in the divorce rate of egalitarians and complementarians, that can be identified. Once again you are making cross generational comparisons that do not hold. Broken homes are not the domain of egalitarians, nor are they caused by egalitarian women, any more than by any other group of people. Broken homes are what they are and any attempt to pin them on one group or another is not helpful.

It sounds as if you are comparing children from non-Christian homes with those from Christian homes. Not that there is much difference there either as to divorce, but many seek something different from what we has.

John, you are not short on trying to score points yourself, and you engage on that level all the time on your blog. You revel in it. You throw rotten vegetables all the time, and are a recipient of quite a few also. Somehow, for me, you disallow the throwing of rotten vegetables. I shall arrange to have them discreetly delivered in a basket.

Now down to business. You have not given me any notion at all that kephale means authority.

I will assume for the purposes of this discussion, unless someone provides evidence otherwise, that kephale is exactly that, the kephale of the body.

The church fathers interpreted kephale in 1 Cor. as the arche or aitia, and very specifically not the archon or exousia. God was not the authority over Christ but the one whose nature Christ shares. God is the first cause, the first principle, the one who IS the nature that Christ shares in. Arche cannot be well translated, but there is a sense of being the one from whom everything else derives. Some people have translated this as “source.”

Man is the arche of woman, according to Genesis, and we share a common nature. Christ became the second Adam and so shares his nature with Adam, and representatively, every man. This nature is also shared by women, but it happened by Christ becoming Adam.

In 1 Cor. 11, he word kephale means shared nature, perfect unity and first principle, the arche/aitia.

In Eph. 5, the kephale is the soteria of the body. The Soter, Christ, the saviour, or the soteria, the salvation (health, preservation, and security) of the body. By observation and in cultural terms Paul sees the husband as having this role.

I say this carefully since we have many women who protect and rescue men in the scriptures, Rahab rescues her father and mother and her whole family, Phoebe and Lydia care for Paul, and so on. However, n the standard household, the husband is the preservation or security of the household.

Therefore, Paul outlines within this patriarchal framework the appropriate way for a Christian to behave, assigning Christians to live within the authoritarian framework.

This interpretation is standard. I don’t claim it as new.

However, this contrasts sharply with complementarianism, which teaches that the husband must be the kephale of the wife, and as such he is the God created and designated authority over her. He is the God-given authority in her life. This is so because kephale means “authority.” Some claim that God inspired Paul to write these words to establish the evident and necessary “authority” of the male over the female. Some say, in fact, in creation, God created men for command and women for submission.

You know and I know that they are quoting Aristotle, that women are without authority.

Therefore, I see that the notion that the male has “authority” in creation and the female does not as a watershed issue. There is even a mention somewhere that in heaven we will still be in essence male and female and women will experience eternal functional subordination, because this is what women are created for.

If you have read any insights into kephale that would further this discussion, I would be interested.

So, yes, the epistles teach Christians how to live as Christians within their cultural paradigms. The epistles do not teach that the husband has total and absolute God-given rule of “authority” over the wife, for the simple reason that kephale does not mean authority.

Comment by Sue

July 5, 2008 @ 5:07 pm

It’s not upotassomai that’s odd here (except for us). It’s agapein. That’s what’s new, and sent eyebrows furling.

I beg to differ with you that agapein is new. The Greek household also depended on philia, mutual affection, and I argue a synonym of agape. What is new is the definition of agape as sacrifice.

Comment by Sue

July 5, 2008 @ 5:09 pm

John,

I am not trying to present anything new or different from the standard. I am trying to show you how the complementarianism that I cite, varies in that it is authoritarianism. It is not soteria, but it is unhealthy.

Comment by molly

July 5, 2008 @ 5:09 pm

Whichever framework you choose to live out your married life, the hard work begins after the choice has been made. And the hard work is the same in all frameworks.

John,
Thank you for your thoughts. I wanted to add that I spent 8 years in a hard-complementarian marriage before we left that for what we have today. The hard work is no where near the same, experientially. Today I am allowed to be a full person. Today I can be a full participant in the hard work of two full adults learning to relate together.

Under hard-complementarianism, which I truly believe to be a form of spiritual abuse (no different from the abusive pastor who rules over his flock), I was not.

There is no freedom of choice when you are given a paradigm that says you either submit 100% of the time to your spiritual leader, or you are committing the same sin that Lucifer did when he did not submit to the lower place God gave him.

Perhaps between soft comps and egals there can be a point of discussion, a place of “agreeing to disagree.” After all, the differences between the two paradigms are really very slight in most circumstances.

But hard comps, of whom I’ve been surrounded with all my life and who are seeming to flourish in certain environments, there is no “agreeing to disagree.” They need to be firmly opposed.

I realize you are coming from an environment where comps are few and far between. I think your cautions and encouragement are probably rightly needed there. But please know that some of us are coming at these issues from a very different environment, a very different set of experiences, ones in which we watch real people, including ourselves, suffer terribly under a very flawed paradigm.

Comment by Sue

July 5, 2008 @ 5:11 pm

Oops, unedited mess. “seek something different from what they have.”

Comment by John

July 5, 2008 @ 5:56 pm

Molly,

I concur with your points. I get to see how flawed a paradigm egalitarianism can be in practice, because that’s what is lived out all around me. You have seen and experienced in your own flesh how flawed a paradigm complementarianism can be. Both of us have to be careful not to generalize too much from our own limited experiences. I’ve learned a lot from cross-cultural experiences, in Europe and the Middle East, and among friends from India, in which these matters are seen in ways whose foundations are different again from either egalitarianism or complementarianism as formulated among us.

But it’s important to step back and notice what you have noticed: that soft comps and (soft) egals have a lot in common. So much reconciliation within the body of Christ would be possible if more people were able to recognize that truth.

Indeed, that is why I began posting on this subject, and will continue to post on this subject: with a view towards encouraging reconciliation among soft comps and soft egals.

Comment by tiro

July 5, 2008 @ 6:11 pm

John writes #86962
“Your most questionable move is to etymologize the meaning of the verb upotassomai, as if that solved anything. It does not. Instead, one must look at usage and context. In terms of usage and context, this verb is what one expects in household codes in which one side of a bilateral relationship (wife-husband, child-parent; slave-master) is expected to submit, and the other to exercise authority.”

While the household codes of that era did indeed frame it in the mastered and the master, Paul does not support that frame. There is nothing about authority or leadership in the husband wife relationship that Paul outl